// Abrupt.

"It wasn't what she said.

It was what she didn't say that told him that the door was firmly closed.

His previous position had been filled and all the in-jokes, the flirtations, the innuendo's, the clever word-plays, the declarations of heartfelt love, the promises, the solicitations, the whispers were absolutely gone. Never to return.

She didn't have to tell him that...

All she had to do was disregard his tentative flirtations and avoid eye contact and then change the subject to something mundane and lock eyes with him, to let him know that THIS was what they were going to talk about now. The change was so abrupt, that it caught him off guard and he stammered his way through a response. The sense of heaviness, sadness, loss was so strong that he actually wanted to just get up and leave the table, altogether.

Eventually, he did. Headed not "to" another place, but "away" from this one."